Author: Misty

Anti-Media – by Derrick Broze

United States — On Tuesday a federal judge ruled President Obama cannot use executive privilege to deny Congress access to records related to failed gun running scheme, Operation Fast and Furious.

U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled that the Department of Justice’s prior release of information related to Fast and Furious invalidated President Obama’s claim that releasing details of the program would cause harm.   Continue reading “Obama is Trying to Keep Program that Armed Drug Cartels Secret, Judge Says Otherwise”

KTOO

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Grocery stores in Alaska are running low on some foods after a cargo ship was delayed by a mechanical issue.

Tote Maritime Alaska’s North Star, which regularly ships groceries and other goods between Tacoma and Anchorage, was supposed to leave Jan. 14 and arrive on Jan. 17. A problem was discovered shortly before its departure.   Continue reading “Groceries run low in Alaska after cargo ship problem”

Slate – by Eric Holthaus

It’s blizzard time on the East Coast, and this week’s storm could wind up being one for the ages. But lost in all the discussion of snow looms a coastal flood threat that could rival some of the strongest storms ever to hit the Northeast.

Weather models continue to go all-in on what may wind up being Washington, D.C.’s snowiest snowstorm in history, besting a 28-inch snowfall back in 1922. At the moment, the Washington area is in the bull’s-eye, with potential for anywhere from 20 to 36 inches, according to the latest models. The storm is currently forecast to be a Top 10 snowstorm for Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City, too. On Wednesday morning, the National Weather Service issued a blizzard watch for the Washington area, warning of “life threatening conditions.” The NWS will also begin launching weather balloons twice as frequently for the next few days at each of its offices east of the Rocky Mountains in an attempt to gather more data to improve its blizzard forecast.
Continue reading “Blizzard Storm Surge Could Rival an East Coast Hurricane Landfall”

Campus Reform – by Peter Fricke

Portland Community College has designated April “Whiteness History Month” (WHM), an “educational project” exploring how the “construct of whiteness” creates racial inequality.

“‘Whiteness History Month: Context, Consequences, and Change’ is a multidisciplinary, district-wide, educational project examining race and racism through an exploration of the construction of whiteness, its origins, and heritage,” PCC states on its website. “Scheduled for the month of April 2016, the project seeks to inspire innovative and practical solutions to community issues and social problems that stem from racism.”   Continue reading “Portland Community College to devote an entire month to ‘whiteness’-shaming”

Yahoo News

San José (AFP) – The first 180 Cuban migrants, of nearly 8,000 stranded in Costa Rica, flew to El Salvador to continue an arduous journey through Central America and Mexico to new lives in the United States.

The Cubans are part of a big wave of migrants leaving their Communist-ruled island over the past year for America, in the wake of a diplomatic thaw between Washington and Havana.   Continue reading “After Central America slog, Cubans can expect US welcome”

Haaretz – AP

The pension fund for the United Methodist Church has blocked five Israeli banks from its investment portfolio in what it describes as a broad review meant to weed out companies that profit from abuse of human rights.

Senior officials in Israel’s Foreign Ministry said they are still examining the decision, but added that Israel will make quiet efforts to convince the leaders of the church to change or soften the measure ahead of the Methodist General Conference in May.   Continue reading “U.S. Church Puts Five Israeli Banks on Investment Blacklist”

Free Thought Project – by Justin Gardner

A new survey conducted by the Centre for Addictions Research of BC helps explain why Big Pharma is so afraid of cannabis. The pharmaceutical and alcohol industries, both powerful influences in Washington, have long lobbied against cannabis legalization in order to protect their profits.

However, the tide has turned as decriminalization of medical and recreational cannabis sweeps the nation and the continent. With legalization, more and more people are discovering how this plant can provide a safe alternative to the dangerous effects of prescription pills.   Continue reading “Big Pharma Shaking In Their Boots As 80% Of Cannabis Users Give Up Prescriptions Pills For Pot”

Redress Information and Analysis – by Lawrence Davidson

Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

Most readers will know that the United States has served as the patron of Israel for decades. Why has it done so? The commonly given reasons are suspect. It is not because the two countries have overlapping interests. The US seeks stability in the Middle East (mostly by supporting dictators) and Israel is constantly making things unstable (mostly by practising ethnic cleansing against Palestinians, illegally colonising conquered lands and launching massive assaults against its neighbours). Nor, as is often claimed, is the alliance based on “shared Western values”. The US long ago outlawed racial, ethnic and religious discrimination in the public sphere. In Israel, religious-based discrimination is the law. The Zionist state’s values in this regard are the opposite of those of the United States.   Continue reading “BDS in the crosshairs of US presidential hopefuls”

BallotPedia

The Holocaust Denial Speech Restrictions Initiative (#15-0073) is an initiated state statute proposed for the California ballot on November 8, 2016.

The measure would prohibit any speech that claims Jewish, Armenian or Ukrainian Holocausts did not exist in any state-funded school, museum or educational institution. It would also prohibit Holocaust denial organizations from distributing information or conducting activities at these state-funded locations.^[1]   Continue reading “California Holocaust Denial Speech Restrictions Initiative (2016)”

The Guardian – by John M Glionna and Jason Wilson

Federal authorities are planning to cut off the power of the wildlife refuge in Oregon that has been taken over by militia, exposing the armed occupiers to sub-zero temperatures in an effort to flush them out.

Armed militants will begin their third day at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, a remote federal outpost in eastern Oregon, on Tuesday, and have vowed to remain for months in protest over the treatment of two local cattle ranchers.   Continue reading “Authorities plan to cut off power to militia at occupied Oregon refuge”

The Electronic Intifada – by Ali Abunimah

In September 2014, on the eve of the Jewish new year, Israel’s leading financial daily named Omar Barghouti among the 100 people most likely to influence the country’s economy in the following year.

Calcalist, the business supplement of the mass circulation newspaper Yediot Ahronot, said that the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, which Barghouti helped found, was “already worrying the government.”   Continue reading “How the Israel boycott movement struck major blows in 2015”

Yahoo News

Just in time for the busy holiday travel season, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has changed the rules of airport protocol to allow TSA agents to force certain passengers to go through the Advanced Imaging Technologies (AIT), even if they want to opt out and would prefer a pat-down.

Although the updated rules appear to have been implemented on December 18th, ProPublica journalist Julia Angwin was one of the first to point it out on Tuesday afternoon.   Continue reading “TSA agents can now force passengers to go through body scanners, even if they opt out”

Yahoo News

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (AP) — The families of more than a dozen victims of the 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, will split $1.5 million under recently finalized settlements of lawsuits against the gunman’s mother’s estate.

A lawyer for several victims’ families says the settlements were finalized Dec. 17. Details of the agreements were first announced in August.   Continue reading “Newtown families split $1.5M from estate of gunman’s mother”